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Eloquent and uncompromising, Swell explores the triumphs and hardships of the journey to new motherhood – through pregnancy, miscarriage, birth and beyond

In the consultation room I stared
at the purple flowers in their purple
vase and imagined my insides:
an ocean, a cave, a storm.

Maria Ferguson’s second poetry collection is a raw and powerful documentation of one woman’s experience of becoming a mother. Against a backdrop of the sounds and sensations of daily life, she longs for her own mother's embrace, observes as her body changes and charts a course through loss and wilting house plants toward recovery, empowerment and renewal.

Tender, direct and winningly witty, Swell distils the poet's complex feelings surrounding family and domesticity, exploring the contending weight and levity felt as she contemplates a thrillingly unfamiliar new chapter. Ferguson is a poet as alert to the absurd as to the shattering, and these are large-hearted poems, full of life and thought. Together, they invite the reader to join them in a search for self-acceptance, for freedom from shame, and for a path to stability in increasingly uncertain times.

© Maria Ferguson 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025